


1960's Blues

by meletes_muse



Series: Times and Places [9]
Category: Sanctuary (TV), Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 20:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10952352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meletes_muse/pseuds/meletes_muse
Summary: It's 1968 and Helen finds out that 'free love' isn't quite so free as she'd thought.





	1960's Blues

July 1968

Old City - Sanctuary

 

“I can’t believe you’re going to marry him,” Helen shakes her head, taking a drag of her cigarette and blowing the smoke out the window into the warm afternoon air. She knows it’s a bad habit, but her accelerated healing makes it almost completely harmless, and she does enjoy the buzz she gets from it. Especially after sex.

“I don’t have much choice,” Deb says softly, as she traces the patterned bedsheets with her slender fingers.

“This isn’t the nineteenth-century, darling. You do have options.”

“I _want_ this child, Helen.” Deb sighs and starts to get dressed, “And I want her, or him, to have stability. _A proper family_.”

Closing the window with soft thud, Helen draws her blue silk kimono around herself. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, the room suddenly feels much cooler.

“You mean a mother and a father.”

“Well, yes.”

Helen can feel the anger bubbling up inside her. “Can’t you see that's what they want us to think? The bloody patriarchy strikes again!”

Deb’s eyes blaze. Most people would call it anger, but Helen thinks it’s defeat.

“We can’t all be like you, Helen! We don’t all have hundreds of years ahead of us and ...”

Her words die away when she sees the hurt in Helen’s eyes.

For the first time since they started this, this arrangement they have, Helen thinks that perhaps it was a bad idea. Jacob’s always hated it, but he put up with it because he knew it was what Deb wanted. Although Helen suspects that if she was a man it would be another story. She wants to shout and scream about how unfair it all is. Instead, she says, quietly, “You could stay here.”

But that does nothing to quell her lover’s anger. “Stay here? And be dependent on you? Can’t you see that’s just the same as marrying Jake?”

Helen shakes her head, firmly. “It's completely different and you know it.”

“Why? Because you’re a woman?”

That certainly stops her in her tracks. She takes a deep breath.

“No, Debra. Because I love you.”

Deb looks at her, dumbstruck. “Oh,” she says.

And it suddenly occurs to Helen that Deb doesn’t feel the same way about her. Of course, she knows it’s unfair to expect it. That’s not what they agreed on. It’s free love, after all. It’s about throwing off society’s shackles, without obligation or judgement. But it seems like the shackles are still very much in place, and Helen’s not sure why she ever thought it would be otherwise. She lets out a tired breath, and sits down next to Deb on the bed. “I’m sorry you feel trapped.” There’s a hint of bitterness there, but she doesn’t feel particularly inclined to suppress it.

“It’s not you, Helen, but I want this child to have opportunities. _Stability_.”

 _There it is._ She wants to laugh, maniacally. Instead, she says, softly, “I understand.”

And she does. It’s why she froze the embryo of her own child, all those years’ ago. Though she thinks that if she was pregnant now, it would be a different story. She reaches out to softly cup Deb’s cheek. “I want you to know that... whatever our relationship, you’ll always be welcome here. You and your child.”

Deb smiles, weakly, and nods, tears threatening to spill.

Helen’s trying really hard to hold it together, but she can feel herself shaking. “I’m going to take a shower.”

It’s not until she’s alone, under the scalding water, that Helen begins to cry.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not 100% certain that this pairing works in the head-canon that I have for this little series, but here it is anyway! When I first started writing these snapshots I imagined Helen and Debra as distant relatives who were also close friends/confidantes, but this just sort of wrote itself.


End file.
